


if love is our defence

by Aramley



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-21
Updated: 2011-06-21
Packaged: 2017-10-20 15:19:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/214156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aramley/pseuds/Aramley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"I am tired of hurting," Rafa says.</i> Set after Rafa's QF loss to David Ferrer at the Australian Open 2011.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if love is our defence

There are losses and losses. There are losses you see coming, the ones that lie heavy like exhaustion on your shoulders and pass like that, lighter after one day's rest and then the next. And there are the losses that slip through like a knife between the ribs: the ones that scar.

Rafa is standing at the window when Novak lets himself into the room (Toni slipped him a keycard, and that was when Novak knew things were really bad). The room is quiet and mostly dark - a light left on in the bathroom casts a dim orangish glow into the rest of the room, and the nightscape of Melbourne through the open window provides the rest of what little light there is.

"Hey," Novak says, softly, watching Rafa at the window. "Don't do it."

Rafa's shoulders move up and then down in a dutiful approximation of a huff of laughter. He doesn't turn around. Novak swallows.

"Sorry," he says. It's not a time for jokes. He tucks the keycard into the back pocket of his jeans and then his hands into the front pockets, because he wants to put them on Rafa so badly and Rafa looks so quiet and so distant, hunched a little in on himself.

Rafa turns, then. "Sorry," he says. "I am not - " and he sighs, scrubs a hand across his face, and shrugs.

"It's okay," Novak says.

Rafa drags untaped fingers through his damp hair. The light isn't good enough to see whether he's been crying, but Novak suspects.

"I am tired of hurting," Rafa says, plain and direct like that isn't pretty much the most utterly gutting thing Novak's ever heard in his life. _I am tired of hurting_. Novak swallows it past the sudden knot in his throat down to where it sits like a stone in his stomach, in his heart.

"Hey," he says, voice rough and dragged up from somewhere. "Hey. Come here."

He doesn't wait for an answer. He just walks up and folds Rafa into him, wrapping him tight like Rafa would almost certainly give him endless shit for if he weren't already winding fingers into the fabric of Novak's t-shirt and letting out a devastatingly sharp breath into Novak's shoulder, hiding his face in the safe and secret darkness of Novak's neck.

Novak's had rough losses, but this one is beyond the range of his experience: one win from three finals, total, doesn't compare to running for the real slam, four in a row. Rafa says he doesn't think about these things, but Novak knows that in his heart he curates a quiet museum to the history of the sport he loves, the achievements of the men he idolises. Roger Federer on his pedestal. Agassi and Sampras and Borg and MacEnroe and Laver, shit, probably back down to Lacoste and Perry. To have been so close - and now -

"I love you," he says, in Serbian, the language of his heart. He breathes it against the shell of Rafa's ear and hopes that Rafa gets the meaning without the sense. He says it because it's a true thing, because he loves Rafa as much like this - hurt and hurting - as any of the times he's come off court lit up and brilliant.

He thinks about the times to come, when the aches stop fading and there are more bad days than good; more losses than wins. When the balance sheet tallies the injuries and the small hurts and finds they outweigh the joys. Novak remembers Marat in that last year, punching his timeslip from tournament to tournament, matches like crossing dates off a calendar. He thinks of how Rafa will look walking off court after court, glancing behind him; how he'll break your heart over, and over, and over. He tightens his arm around Rafa's neck and presses a kiss against Rafa's hair.

Loving isn't enough to keep all that away, so he says, "I'm here. I'm here," meaning now, and always.


End file.
